Heart Website update

My biog on Heart website (my agent) has been updated.

'Prince Igor' ENO April 1-5

I was commissioned by Beam to provide imagery for the Russian Opera 'Prince Igor' by Alexander Borodin now being performed by Novaya Opera at the ENO April 1-5. The production is part of the UK-Russia Year of Culture. The golden image portrays the conflicted 'Prince Igor' caught between two worlds: Old Russia and the Polovtsians. Although well known in Russia (at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, passages of 'Prince Igor' were played) the opera is rarely performed in Britain. Conductor: Jan Latham-Koenig, 
Stage Direction: Yuri Alexandrov, 
Set and Costume Designer: Vyacheslav Okunev. Graphic design: Beam.

'Ministry of Technology' Mobile Cinema

Last Summer I came across Oliver Halls in Devon, who has restored a Mobile Cinema Van and is touring schools, communities and coastal areas showing historic footage of local News. The cinema seats about 20. The van is incredible - the front glass turret like something borrowed from a WW2 Flying Fortress Bomber. These Bedford vans were originally ordered by the UK's (Orwellian sounding) 'Ministry of Technology'. The vans toured factories to 'educate' workers on the wonders of new materials and industrial processes. There is a great article with a lot of information, on the ever great BLDGBLOG

Portrait of Mr. S. Claus

Happy Holidays and New Year 

Masterpieces: Art & East Anglia

I went to see 'Masterpices: Art & East Anglia' at the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich - on till 24 February 2014. The centre has had had a re-vamp and a change of the collection layout. Amongst the items in the 'Masterpieces' show that I picked up on was a photograph by Peter Henry Emerson, an early romatic photographer of the Fens and an intricate 1963 architectural model for the UEA campus designed by Denis Lasdun. I feel excitedly poised somewhere between these two spaces/places.

PH Emerson, A Winter's Morning, 1887, photo etching

Denis Lasdun and Philip Wood, UEA campus building, 1963

The Day a President Died

November 22 marks the 50th anniversary of the 1963 assassination of President J.F. Kennedy. Susan Cheever (daughter of the writer, John Cheever) has written a piece for Brown University (where she was studying) and looks back to that day on campus and reflects on the tricks that memory plays over time.  "It was one of those sunny autumn afternoons that smell of apples and falling leaves. Thanksgiving break was just a few days away. I checked the date as I walked out of Miller Hall and headed for the Thayer Street market. November 22, 1963." Here is my illustration that accompanies her piece:

For Brown Alumni Magazine, 2013

The Library of Lost Books, November 6 - 23

I'm showing a bookwork  as part of 'The Library of Lost Books' - an exhibtion at the controversial new Birmingham Library, 6 - 23 November. The Library of Lost Books is a collection of discarded and damaged library books which artist and curator, Susan Kruse rescued and sent to a number of artists to make work with. I was sent the 1881 Catalogue of Books for the Richmond Library. As I opened this fragile object, it split (by chance) between the listing for ‘god’ and ‘gold’. I realised the catalogue charted a time of flux and the conception of 'belief' was shifting from the religious to the scientific and social.